Balance And Social Contract

After the last session, I had one of my players chatting with me about how different games systems are good for different purposes. In particular, he mentioned the way that PFRPG encounters have an automated system for ensuring encounter balance through a detailed challenge rating formula.

My immediate reaction was that this was something that came at the cost of strategic decision. If an entire area consists of nothing but balanced encounters (yielding level-appropriate treasures), then there are really no encounter-selection decisions to be made. Whatever you attack, it will give you about the same challenge, scaled to your level, with roughly the same reward. There's no need to exercise selectivity in deciding whether or not to bash down a door and kill what's inside. It's just guaranteed to be something you can defeat, given average luck. Nor does it help to avoid that encounter, since the very next one will be about the same difficulty -- and yield about the same treasure. You'll just waste the time explaining how to avoid the encounter only to move on to a reskinned version of the exact same thing. So the game becomes a methodical room-clearing exercise, like many computer RPGs.

This isn't always necessarily a bad thing. In 4th edition D&D, in particular, the intent of WotC was clearly to make a good tactical miniature man-to-man combat system, and to allow that tactical combat to have a lot of richness and complexity. For someone wanting to luxuriate in a detailed tactical simulator with lots of crunchy gamist decisions to make, this is exactly the mechanics you want. Anything else would be silly -- like having everyone set up a Warhammer 40K Table, only to roleplay a parley between the Space Marines and the Tau that resulted in a truce that required everyone to pack up the table and go home.

In my current campaign, though, the ACKS rules pretty explicitly emphasize strategic-level decision. Character classes are designed around non-combat capabilities; a bard, say, is a wimpy fighter with powerful non-combat proficiency options. But more importantly, the game itself employs an old-school approach toward the integration of "balance" into the game's social contract. The philosophical contrast is this:

• In a modern RPG, balance is a one-sided GM responsibility.
• In a retro RPG, balance is a negotiated aspect of emergent play.

In an earlier post, I noted how old-school RPG play really has four distinct modes: (1) dungeon-crawling, (2) hex-crawling, (3) mass combat, and (4) strategic resource management. The "dungeon crawling game" bears a strong superficial resemblance to a modern packaged adventure path, with monsters populating a traditional dungeon. But the mechanics of the old-school dungeon-crawl are vastly different than in more modern systems because of the pivot away from session-long resource management. Really, most modern games have more in common with the "hex crawling game" in terms of structure, as isolated encounters that don't share resource pools.

The critical difference in the system is how hit points are understood. A modern game (4th edition onward, or any recent computer game) tends to interpret hit points as "luck", or "stamina", or "the favor of the gods". When they run out, the next hit kills you because you exhausted your supply of those intangibles. It's easy to regain those intangibles between battles with a "healing surge", or a "quick rest", or some similar mechanic. Even some spell-like effects work the same way, implemented as "per encounter" or "at will" abilities, or by allowing a quick rest to recover some or all spell slots (points, whatever). Death is replaced by a temporary knock-out effect. As a result, each combat can be balanced in roughly the same way: You assume everyone starts at full health, and build a mirror-image collection of enemies. This makes it perfectly sensible to put together a series of encounters that all have identical challenge ratings, maybe with a slightly harder boss fight at the end for drama.

A simulationist retro-RPG like ACKS extends resource management over the entire session. Hit points (understood as "flesh wounds" or "blood loss") can't easily be returned, since healing spells are pretty weak and natural healing takes forever. Spells are "per day", not "per encounter". Death is permanent, and serious injuries are realistically incapacitating. This means that putting together encounters that are "balanced" will beat down the party quickly (which might be fun for a Tomb of Horrors-esqe tournament module, but not for a long campaign). Instead, the responsibility of the GM is to ensure that most encounters are weak, and the few strong encounters are either avoidable or else are capstone events for which the party will be able to carefully plan and prepare (to wring every advantage out of combat-as-war strategems). The weak encounters never yield good rewards and drain resources, so it's more efficient to bypass them when possible. If you want a tough encounter with good rewards, you need to do the legwork to find one.

(Incidentally, I'd say that 3rd edition D&D and PFRPG are both centrist systems that encourage a little of both approaches.)

The party bears a much heavier level of responsibility for finding methods of identifying and classifying potentially difficult encounters, to know when to avoid them or how to prepare for them. Kicking down every door will eventually lead to a total party kill. Several common methods of gathering strategic information include:

• Dungeon geometry tropes: E.g. the deep caves have nastier monsters, so dwarves get a "detect slopes and depths underground" racial perk
• Scouting techniques: Listening at doors, for example, is usually prudent before bashing them down
• Parley with dungeon denizens
• Interrogation: Leave an orc alive after combat to see if you can get a sense of where the Big Bads are holed up (hopefully you took "orc" as a language!)
• Exploiting dungeon faction rivalries
• Disguise and infiltration
• Divination magic (once you figure out the right questions to ask!)
• When all else fails, exploring recklessly and then running away from that demilich...

The social contract for a GM is to provide a lot of non-fatal encounters that slowly nickel-and-dime the party's resources (spells and hit points) to the point of feeling progressively more weak and vulnerable as they approach a major objective -- so that "Do we really want to keep going?" is a tough call, not a no-brainer.

Green Pass Campaign II, Session 4: Grave Robbing

Note: I'm adding a cumulative +10 xp bonus counter for exploring rooms in a single expedition (i.e., the second room gets +20, the third gets +30, and so forth, up to +250 for the 25th room this week). Since this session was a continuation of last week's expedition, the counter wasn't reset.

June 10, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP
After dispatching a room of zombies, the party elected to break for a short lunch. Finkle the gnome had apparently wandered off (with Mort the wardog and his new pet rat) to do something odd and gnomish. Attempts to inspect the glowing gem in his pot resulted only in the immediate disappartion of the gem with a small 'pop'.

In a room beyond the zombies, searching revealed a set of strange boxes, each full of bones and a single right-handed glove with a weird demon face on them. After lifting the boxes the examine them, a set of four small levers were discovered under each box. Using gloved hands, the party successfully triggered a secret door into a nearby burial chamber containing the remains of a priest of the old nature god Silvanus, with a shrine beyond. The priest's vestments and cudgel were well-preserved, and stashed away for future study. The bard Piper left a small offering and received the blessing of Silvanus in return.

Progressing through a series of similar hidden doors to the south earned egress into a well-traveled hallway that led to a gruesome scene. Two grave-robbers were impaled into the solid stone wall by spears as a warning, their intestines ripped open and slowly rotting. There were also a set of peculiar tracks (definitely non-human) leading east out of the room. The party elected to split into two groups, one following the tracks, and the other positioning as a rear guard.

Following the tracks led to a strange little poltergeist shrieking curses in some lost language to break the silence of the dungeon, and hurling small bits of rock and pottery. A single arrow dispatched the creature. Beyond the ghost, a door led to a small cache of abandoned supplies, including a sledgehammer. Beyond the cache was a bricked door, easily dismantled. Inside the sealed room beyond they found a strange scrying basin surrounded by a set of six carved stone knights in alcoves sunk into the walls. Fearful of the guardian knights, the explorers elected to leave the basin (mostly) undisturbed and returned to the main party.

(Art: Thomas Denmark)

Just beyond the entry point, the party decided to explore up a short hallway... and discovered a pressure-sensitive plate that set off a portcullis. The front lines of the party were briefly cut off as a wave of skeletal guards poured into the room. A judicious application of lizardly force to the gate allowed for a swift reinforcement, although with a powerful incantation from Reed crushing most of the skeletons with earthen teeth, it was hardly an emergency.

After some reshuffling of party members, the exploring group found another bricked-up entrance that led into some private burial chambers. All three tombs contained minor bits of coin and jewelry, and only the middle one had any guardians, some recently risen skeletons. (Well, unless you count a cluster of those nasty little rats squashed beneath a saurian-opened door.) On the way back out the party was jumped by a few more zombies, but dispatched them with relatively little effort.

Feeling uneasy about emerging onto the barrow moors at night, the party elected to return to the Keep (and Centerpost) to recuperate. The sage, Fridaswitha the Scriptrix, identified the ring (as a ring of protection), the cudgel (as a simple enchanted club), the vestments (as an elementally-warded spidersilk robe), and the gem by reputation (clearly something cursed, and now bound permanently to Finkle). She looked with dismay at the small stone runic tablet recovered from the skeletons' tomb, on the grounds that it might contain useful information but would just as likely contain a horrible curse of death. Apparently the party will need to discover someone braver (or more gullible) than her to read it!

Terra and the barbarians continued to investigate the strange travelers passing through Centerpost from the east. Meros the nightblade found an underworld fence willing to purchase his dubiously pocketed gem.

The bard applied his considerable skill at seduction to arrange a charming dinner date with Frida (a perfect 10 on the Hot-or-Not Dice Check, just for the record), deciding only at the last minute that it
might be ethically dubious to propose marriage to her solely in order to get a long-term discount on magical item identification. For now.

Treasure and Experience
Coins: 400 gp, 30 gp, 20 gp, 91 sp, 400 sp, 123 sp, 300 sp, 200 sp (=> 561 gp)
Gems/Jewelry: 15 gems (200 each), electrum necklace (56), 2 electrum bracelets (52 each), silver locket (60), 2 platinum necklaces (174 each) (=> 3394 gp)
Trade Goods: 4 demon-face ceremonial gloves that are really good for disguising your right hand during... a puppet show, maybe?
Items of special interest: a magical ring, a glowing gem, spidersilk clerical vestments, a cudgel, a runic tablet, a pale grey potion, and a sky blue potion smelling of lilacs

Total nonmagical treasure value: 3955 gp, after -679 gp (20% fee) to appraise jewelry
Gold per share: 312 gp

Explored: 25 rooms (1 barrow mound with 3 rooms, 22 catacomb rooms)

Killed: 11 giant rats (55 xp), 7 skeleton guards (91 xp), 4 zombies (116 xp), 7 skeletons (91 xp), 1 noisy poltergeist (5 xp), 6 zombie patrollers (174 xp)
Turned: 7 zombies (203 xp)
Tricked into wandering off to certain doom: 11 tomb robbers (550 xp)
Squashed by a punched-in door ('saurian lockpick'): 8 giant rats (40 xp)

Total experience from treasure: 3955 xp
Total experience from kills: 1325 xp
Total experience from exploration: 3250 xp
Total experience: 8530 xp
Total experience per member: 741 xp

Note: Meros the greedy nightblade receives an additional 200 gp and 200 xp for his malicious act of thievery. And possibly also the eternal seething hatred of the rest of the group -- but, hey, shiny gem!

Combat Maneuvers

Every man-to-man combat system begins with the assumption that both sides will take turns bipping one another with swords or lasers or whatever. The moment you allow for more complicated forms of interaction, things can get amazingly complicated in a hurry.

Our current campaign under the ACKS system uses a double-test for any special combat maneuver:

• make a normal attack with a -4 penalty, then
• give the target a saving throw vs paralysis

Effectively this makes success depend on three things: (1) attacker level, (2) defender armor class, and (3) defender level. (There's also a loose admonition to apply suitable penalties for size differential, but those are left to judge's discretion.)

The most controversial feature here is armor class. The system designer (Alex Macris) is pretty adamant about the innovation of a "touch AC" in D&D (or a CMD in Pathfinder) going to far in terms of negating the value of gear. The concept here is that being armored doesn't just block attacks, it also frees you up to defend in a totally different and far more confident way. A knight doesn't need to focus on anything except holding a sword and using it to beat someone else on the head. A light fencer needs to focus on survival-footwork first, and so is much more vulnerable to trickery. For example, he's going to constantly be using his sword to parry, which is going to make it easier to sunder that sword.

From a gamist perspective, there's another argument at stake here: "tanks" should be hard to control. If a heavily armored fighter steps forward, you don't want there to be a single right answer for how to neutralize him every encounter. "Trip him and make him fall down" is funny the first time, but if it happens every battle and becomes such an obvious tactic as to be mandatory, then it's negating the whole concept of having armor class as a numerical proxy for defense ability. The best tactic is then always to grapple the tank, then run past to murder everyone else. So special maneuvers shouldn't, in general, be able to disregard armor class, since that would negate the value (and fun) of stomping around the battlefield as an impregnably armored behemoth.

The bottom line is that I've decided it's probably best to keep using armor class as the defending stat for special maneuvers, rather than try to introduce an independent combat maneuver defense. For things like "sunder weapon" or "disarm", I think the best approach might be to define an alternate minimum armor class equal to level + strength-bonus, so that hulking shirtless barbarians can still hold onto their giant axes. High AC defenders could still use armor class, but low AC strikers could replace that with their raw force and tenacity.

Green Pass Campaign: Factions

At this point there have been enough encounters and clues that it's getting a little hard to keep track of which organizations are active in the area. Here's a brief overview of the factions and their allegiances:

Durnovaric Expeditionary Force
Durnovar is the most powerful lawful civilization in the region. The expeditionary forces base out of Centerpost. They control both Footman's Notch (the strategically important gate at the high point of Green Pass) and Balewood Keep (the center of military operations on the dangerous east side of the mountains). Their local forces are substantially depleted and scattered after the defeat outside Umeskelion, putting them on the defensive, unable to properly guard trade caravans or patrol against invaders.

Orcs

Quite of few of these cruel beastmen were found lurking in the caverns a few months back, and put to flight. One of their communications was intercepted. They seem to be the advance scouts of some kind of invading army under a commander named Kormoc, with ambitions to capture the gates and invade into the west to pillage and plunder. They are slavers, and tend to seize captives alive. They dislike the acolytes of Orcus. At least one message in orcish has been recovered from a bandit group. Maybe they have some kind of alliance.

Goblins/Hobgoblins
They hate the orcs, but oddly were found living right next door to them. Since they drove off the last assault into their territory, they've probably had plenty of time to regroup and reinforce.

Lizardmen
A handful of these live in the swamp. They dislike all outsiders and regard the region as their own turf.

Bandits and Brigands
There are a few of these around, but there's no reason to assume they are working together. The party has put a significant dent in the operations of at least one of their camps, but clearly they are being sponsored by some external organization. They regard the tombs as haunted, but are driven to raid them by greed and the shortage of caravan traffic. A note recovered from one of their camps mentions cursed tablets that doom whoever reads them.

Necromancers
These haven't been encountered yet, but have been mentioned in rumors and on the treasure map. They function as an underground cabal and serve under the banner of a demigod named Sutekh (modeled after the Egyptian god of violence and disorder). Most of their leaders are arcane magic-users. They are infiltrating all sorts of locations and seizing victims for their unnatural experimentation with creating new golems and undead. Rumor also has it they might be allied with some tribe of bugbears. According to the bishop at Centerpost, they would be unlikely to be in an alliance with anyone loyal to a different death god.

Acolytes of Orcus
They are a rival cult mentioned in rumors, serving the demon prince of the undead, Orcus. (This borrows the name of the Etruscan god of the dead, but here re-envisioned as a wicked demon lord with a long legacy of archvillainy in every edition of D&D dating back to the 70s). The acolytes are supposedly trying to summon a balrog (or balor, or Type VI demon, or whatever the kids are calling them these days). They are chaos priests who raise undead, and also hire troll goons for extra muscle. Rumor has it that they've engineered new types of undead with fire resistance, compensating for a standard vulnerability that heroes in the past have been able to exploit. There's no indication of where they might be operating, or what their agenda might be.

Nergal
A mostly forgotten death god of the ancient Thulian civilization that once ruled Umeskelion in the distant past and left behind the barrows and catacombs. (His name is borrowed from the ancient Mesopotamian god of the underworld.) The art in the barrows seems to depict and celebrate his worship. Probably doesn't have any living followers, although the treasure map mentions something about "Chosen of Nergal" and "twisted servants"...

Green Pass Campaign II, Session 3: Bring Torches!

This session stopped in the middle of a dungeon, so technically no treasure has been recovered and thus there's no experience to award. But I'll still write up the story as far as it's gone.

May 27 through June 10, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP
With Zegzinu and Reed both out of commission for at least a week to recuperate from injuries, the rest of the party elected to divide attention between collecting information from the captured bandit lieutenant, and trying to unravel the mysteries of the various items recovered from the camp. After a few days travel up through the notch to Centerpost, the non-injured portion of the team sought out a sage at the cathedral's scriptorium and library. After carefully lying in wait to find a discerning lady who would appreciate his combination of loremastery and musicianship, the bard Piper finally coaxed his mark (a certain young scriptrix, Fridaswith) into providing a discounted analysis of the sword, staff, and censer.

The staff was a fairly minor clerical tool (staff of striking +1, double damage on command word "suffer", unknown charges), but the censer was a peculiar relic of ancient Thulian ritualists, capable of empowering summoning spells with the spilled blood of innocents. After some deliberation, the party elected to leave it at the keep's chapel, as a weapon of last resort in retaliation for any external assault. The potion (Climbing) and scroll (Ward against Elementals) were also identified and stashed for future use. Renata's sword was deemed free of any curse, and recommended for discovery through personal use. (By the end of a session of use, it should be plausible to identify the precise bonus as a +3.) The party returned to Balewood with a hired priest-militant, a few days of rations, a grappling hook, and an extra horse and cart. The gnome Finkle submitted an extensive list of dubious shopping items (itching powder, "fun" mushrooms, snake-in-a-can) to the local ruffians' syndicated for custom procurement. Local room and board were paid by exchange of bardic services. A final check to determine exactly how many broken hearts the bard left behind indicated the answer was: one.

Meanwhile, interrogation of the bandit sergeant revealed that he was a recent hire in the aftermath of some minor disaster, that the disaster had resulted in a treasure being stashed somewhere in the depths, and that Renata had some kind of sponsoring authority funding her operations. He generally seemed alarmed by the prospect of running afoul of her, even after his capture.

After setting out again, the party set up camp on the road and ascended back to the barrows. A few experiments in acoustics convinced the party that the barrows themselves might be partially connected, or at least a few of them were. Unfortunately the clanging roused a procession of zombies out of the depths, which by good fortune were promptly turned en masse by the clericical henchman Brother Bartimaeus with no additional effort required. They reversed course without breaking stride and marched right back into the underground depths.

Exploration of an iron-bound barrow revealed a crypt barren of nearly anything but elaborate traps, the second of which claimed the mage Malcolm as he was distracted by a magical aura, and nearly dashed him to pieces in a spiked pit. After being hauled out, it was clear that he was in no shape to fight or run, and the lizardish gladiator packed him up onto his scaly shoulders. The treasures of the barrow included an enchanted ring, an oddly glowing gem recovered by Finkle's unseen servant, and some spare silver coinage. The members present also pried off an extensive collection of valuable gems (at least 1500 gp worth) from the pillars (minus whatever the opportunistic Meros decided to pocket for his own clandestine personal share).

The band then gathered courage for a direct assault on the depths with the treasure map in hand. Descent into the barrow revealed a massive rampart of skulls and debris below the entry chasm, and they could easily drop into the room below. From that point forward they advanced as a narrow column. First they discovered a room with a strange impish idol and several offerings of bagged coins, which the bard extracted with maximum paranoia using his grappling hook, and even then only after the patrol of a toy soldier proved uneventful. Meanwhile, you-don't-know-I'm-a-nighblade Terra Daystar quietly wandered away to explore a secret passage, which lead gruesomely to a small closet filled with wet human scalps. Apparently something in the depths was hunting grave robbers, a piece of information she elected to conceal as "too disturbing" to be worth troubling the mood of the rest of the party. Besides, it's more fun to be surprised, right?

The only other nearby door revealed the obligatory room full of giant rats, which gladiator Zegzinu squashed with effortless zeal (well, aside from one that was merely stunned which Finkle requested for a pet). With a clear path marked on the map, the adventurers opted to conscientiously observe the time-honored tradition of wandering off in exactly the opposite direction...

Reaction Rolls: Some Clarification

Reactions rolls using a 2d6 "spectrum of results" table date back all the way to the original days of D&D, and probably predate the introduction of a d20 for combat rolls. When extended to a more modern RPG context (like my current ACKS campaign), it can be confusing to figure out how all the new proficiency and class options interact. In particular, there are many more modifiers available, which means that reaction rolls can easily shift into "auto-success" range.

Reaction abilities can be really powerful. Last session, the hardest encounter was actually rolled off a random encounter table. Luckily it involved human grave-robbers, who could be persuaded to wander off (probably to their doom). If they had attacked they might have wiped the party, so having a good reaction modifier is in some sense more powerful than an entire stack of magical weapons and armor.

Looking at the ACKS forums provides a little more evidence as to which abilities are supposed to combine with which other abilities. An extensive thread (with an eventual post by the designer Alex Macris) suggests the system should work in the following way:

1) An initial reaction roll is made, with the GM classifying the encounter as an attempt at Diplomacy, Intimidation, or Seduction, or none of the above (i.e., for beasts, or for monsters with an unfamiliar language).

2) The classification is based on RP behavior, taking note of what the player is actually saying in the greeting. (You can't just say "I'm doing my Intimidation schtick on them", you need to actually be intimidating!)

3) These categories are mutually exclusive, and use totally different types of modifiers. (For example, waving a sword around makes Intimidation easier, but Diplomacy harder!)

4) Whoever is the party leader (i.e., the guy in front) is the person whose class and proficiencies are used. If you want to parley with those guys who just emerged out of that murky catacomb darkness 30 feet in front of you, you need to already be walking in front.

5) After a few seconds of interaction an additional reaction roll can be attempted, either of the same type or a new type. Subsequent rolls get a modifier based on the initial result. By this time a different person can have walked to the front of the group to become the new speaker.

6) After a minute of interaction, another roll can be made. (And then again after ten minutes, an hour, and a day, and each day thereafter.)

Note that this means that the base +2 proficiency modifiers for each of the three basic categories will never stack with one another. The abilities that might stack with the basic proficiencies for the three categories are:

• the Charisma bonus, which always applies;
• Mystic Aura (+2), applies with all three, and turns results of 12+ into a short-term charm person result (while in range of the aura);
• Art or Performance (+1), useful only with Seduction (this isn't in the base rules, but Alex still includes it);
• Bribery (+1/+2/+3, depending on bribe size), useful only with Diplomacy, but only modifies a subsequent roll after conversation has already begun;
• Bargaining (+2), useful only with Diplomacy, but only comes into play when haggling in direct competition with another bargainer (make opposed rolls);
• Any additional modifiers the GM believes are appropriate: Alex lists a huge number of possible situational modifiers, which usually amount to "talking to bad guys who hate you is hard and involves some big penalties in the range -1 to -5".

Federico Andreotti's The Serenade

Magical Music is useful only with potential Seduction targets (the text says "serenade those who are potentially attracted to the character"). It doesn't give any additional modifiers to the Seduction reaction roll itself beyond those for Performance. It does give the option of a Performance throw to instantly convert the outcome to a charm person result. (Performance itself can get a bonus for a high-quality instrument, but not the reaction roll.)

Seduction and Intimidation attempts only get the +2 modifier from the associated proficiency if there's some expectation that these are reasonable reactions. You can't just randomly try to Intimidate every person you meet, only someone who thinks you are an authority figure (from a Disguise, say), or someone to whom you seem obviously much more powerful.

When dealing with normal or giant animals, you use Beast Friendship (+2), but can't use anything else. Alternatively, a successful Magical Music throw can replace any animal reaction with sleep.

When dealing with monsters who speak an unfamiliar language, you use the Charisma modifier but can't use anything else. Learning languages is important! It's possible to imagine exceptions to this-- for example, a temple bladedancer with Performance (Dance) being able to Seduce a foreign nobleman without ever speaking -- but probably not in dugeoneering environments. (Sorry, but orcs hate mimes!)